The Protagonist Gets Figured Out
Once I showed them one curveball they weren't expecting, facing Po'eun High's hitters got a whole lot easier.
STRIKE!!
[147 km/h]
A guy who's second-guessing the curve? I just pound him with three fastballs.
A guy who isn't? I throw three curves in a row instead.
My fastball was sitting around 147 on average these days, and while I hadn't thrown the curve enough to call it precise, it was coming in somewhere in the mid-120s. A human being simply cannot time a twenty-kilometer-per-hour gap between a fastball and an off-speed pitch in one swing. Even a ten-k changeup throws hitters off — but a twenty-k difference arriving when they least expect it? That's on another level entirely.
I wrapped up the inning nice and clean, and when I headed back to the dugout, Nam Kang-min trailed along behind me with a half-resigned look on his face.
"It ain't ready yet, y'know."
"I know. Still, it was worth throwing."
Nam Kang-min wore an expression that said he was sick of it already.
"Two more times like that and next thing I know you'll be flingin' knuckleballs out there. Fine, fine. Go on and throw whatever the heck y'want."
Come to think of it, practicing the knuckleball wasn't a bad idea. I hadn't even tried it once, had I?
Coach Kim Hyun-min no longer had the energy left to be surprised.
STRIKE!!! OUT!
[125 km/h]
In the next inning, Kim Yi-seon took the mound as if it were the most natural thing in the world and kept hammering curves. That was already the seventh curveball of the game. It was as if he were saying, I know full well you guys only prepared for the changeup — so let me tattoo "curveball" into your heads as an option. The changeup's share of his repertoire had all but vanished.
"Pitching Coach. Baseball really is a hard game, isn't it? That's a man out there making hitters look foolish with a curve like that."
"If anything, you'd have to say the team that decided to throw it is the bolder one, Coach."
Kim Yi-seon's first curveball had looked a little green, but it had still been genuinely good. The break had been serviceable, and its trajectory had momentarily masqueraded as a fastball — a quality pitch, all things considered.
"Was that last one actually a curve?"
"Ah... it sort of floated off his hand on release, so it probably was."
But even that first curve had apparently been nothing more than beginner's luck. Every curve Kim Yi-seon threw after it was far worse than the shaky one that started it all.
The one he'd just thrown, for instance, was embarrassing to even call a curve — barely any drop at all, and it came in at the top of the zone. The break angle was all over the place; on the ones that didn't drop, the angle was so shallow I mistook it for a changeup. The command was a mystery — deliberate or not, there was no such thing as location, the ball just flew wherever it pleased.
Even the telltale float off the fingertips that a curveball always betrays was impossible to hide, so any hitter watching closely enough from the start could identify it for what it was.
The thing was so wild even the catcher couldn't handle it — he'd already dropped three of the curves thrown so far. He'd at least blocked them well enough that none skipped to the backstop, granted.
And yet Po'eun High's hitters couldn't touch it.
"Part of it is that they drilled their swing timing exclusively against changeups... but beyond the break angle, that pitch's whole power lies in deception and velocity gap. A hitter with good instincts would adapt quickly enough, but not every player can."
Kim Yi-seon's curveball came off the exact same delivery, the exact same arm swing, as his four-seamer and his changeup. If there were even the slightest difference, hitters might stand a chance of telling them apart — but they truly were identical. And on top of that, the velocities were ten kilometers apart?
This was a kid who'd already been calling a two-option cat-and-mouse game with total command. With three options on the table, abandoning amateur guess-hitting was probably the right call.
"...Analyst. At this point, shouldn't we move to Plan B?"
"I'd say so, Coach. The other side has clearly caught on to some of our scheme — he's taunting us by mixing in all three pitches. That said, there's still a path. The suppression of their lineup is proceeding exactly as planned."
Right. Baseball is a game you win by scoring and lose by giving up runs.
No runs had come across yet, but none had been surrendered either. Kim Yi-seon wasn't quite in shutout form, no — but opportunity always comes around in baseball. And to seize that opportunity when it did, they would have to keep their own net sealed that much tighter.
"Pitching Coach. How's Sang-wan's arm?"
"Perfect. Shall I have him get ready?"
"Yes. Tell him to start loosening up — not his shoulder just yet, but the rest of him. Yeong-taek only goes through the seventh; Sang-wan takes the eighth and ninth back-to-back."
Which meant they'd have to go all-in, even if it meant bringing the closer in a little early.
"And Hitting Coach — tell the boys. We're moving to Plan B."
Top of the seventh. My pitch count still had plenty of room. Keep this up and a shutout was genuinely on the table.
I rolled my neck lightly and loosened the tension from my shoulders. Both of them, when I tested them, were still fresh. There was a faint weariness in my lower back and legs, but nothing I couldn't push through.
The next hitter stepped into the box. He'd been completely lost in both of his earlier at-bats, so I started my scouting light, starting with a first-pitch fastball.
Nam Kang-min must have agreed, because he gave a small nod. I followed his mitt and fired a fastball up in the zone.
"Foul!"
But the bat came through on time. The timing was right — he'd just gotten under it, and the ball sailed straight back, cracking off the protective netting behind home plate.
As I remembered it, this same guy couldn't catch up to three straight pitches thrown right at him last at-bat. And now?
The scoreboard read 144 km/h. Considering I was a touch tired, and that with the offense giving me breathing room I'd relaxed and thrown it, that speed was about what you'd expect.
So this was what a cleanup hitter looked like, huh. Noted — if I took something off, he could catch up to it. This time I focused properly and fired the second pitch. Four-seamer again.
"Foul!"
But he chopped that one off too. The radar read 149 — that was a legitimately good pitch.
A thought crept in: had the third at-bat made the timing familiar to him? Except his swing didn't actually seem to have started any earlier than before. Then what was this?
While I was mulling it over, Nam Kang-min called for a changeup down in the zone.
Even if the opponent had been sitting on the changeup all game, if this guy could time two straight fastballs in the same at-bat, the thinking went, he couldn't possibly get around on a changeup. I agreed to an extent, nodded, and went straight into my delivery.
After a beat to steady my breath, I eased the changeup out there, almost pushing it.
Tick!
"OUT!"
But even then the bat came around more or less on time. The ball trickled as an infield chopper — mercifully not barreled — and it died as an infield groundout. The shortstop gobbled it up. Clean out.
This wasn't a matter of timing anymore. It felt like the bat speed and raw contact ability themselves had improved. Could contact skills really sharpen that much in a single afternoon?
A vague unease prickled at me as the next hitter approached.
And the moment I saw him taking his practice swings, I understood exactly what Po'eun High had been preparing.
"Wow. Unbelievable. I mean, it's not like it's against the rules, but still."
I hadn't noticed with the last guy because the bats looked so similar — but they'd swapped in different ones. Now that the new design made the switch obvious, I could see it plain as day. The bat this hitter carried was slightly shorter than the one he'd brought to his last plate appearance. Lighter too, no question.
His stance in the box was different as well. He was choking way up on the handle now, and his stride had narrowed considerably. The previous hitter hadn't been quite this extreme, which was why I'd missed it — but looking back, he'd been gripping it short too.
"Some guys wring a single bat dry their whole careers, and these clowns have a different bat for every scheme?"
The on-deck hitter told the same story. It didn't take a genius — this was a team-wide plan to maximize contact and chase luck.
The shallow arithmetic went something like this: flood the zone with contact, churn out grounders and cheap fouls, and with enough rolls of the dice maybe an infield single falls. Even if the luck runs bad, every foul stretches the pitch count. To that end, the same Po'eun hitters who'd been lugging heavy, long bats up there chasing one lucky extra-base hit had quietly traded down for short, light ones.
And there was nothing inherently wrong with it. It was a rational, sensible adjustment — pros made it all the time, player by player. But this wasn't an individual decision. This was an entire team marching to the batter's box in lockstep, every single one of them re-equipped without exception. The hitter I'd just retired, mind you, had been their five-hole hitter — part of their own cleanup trio.
Was that spinelessness? Or a worldview so data-driven it held no biases of any kind? For the first time, I understood the old-school baseball men who'd bristled the first time they ever saw a defensive shift.
Po'eun High's scheme was half a success. They scraped together two or so more fortunate hits and wrung a mountain of pitches out of me. No runs, though. Not a single one.
Top of the ninth. Having thrown 103 pitches through the end of the eighth, I was no longer eligible to pitch this inning. Two pitches under the hard cap of 105 — not a forced removal, which was the only reason I could step into the batter's box right now.
The game still hung at 0–0, a dead-even pitchers' duel. Normally, a duel like this drains the crowd.
"Kim Yi-seon! Kim Yi-seon! Send it flyyyy-ing, Kim Yi-seon!"
Not this time. The star of this duel was me, and the man stepping to the plate right now was me too.
A good number of these fans had come specifically to watch me, and the spectacle had them still roaring their support with undiminished passion.
Bathed in their cheers, I settled into the box. The pitcher on the mound was Po'eun High's closer, up for the first time last inning. I was pretty sure he'd appeared in the manga too, but he clearly hadn't been a major character, because nothing about him came back to me.
The Coach had told me to be careful — that this pitcher was on professional radars. But then, pitcher Kim Yi-seon wasn't the only one drawing pro interest; batter Kim Yi-seon had caught a few eyes himself. Honestly, all this fuss over so little.
I was the leadoff hitter, nobody on base. No pressure to manufacture any particular kind of swing — all I had to do was let my bat fly, free and easy.
Going by last inning's work, this pitcher wasn't the type to pitch around anyone. If anything, he was the classic power pitcher, a genuine gambler who lived for head-on showdowns.
His eyes locked onto mine. A pitcher who wouldn't concede an inch in the staredown. Good. That's exactly how he should be.
I zeroed in on his hand. Whatever came, I wouldn't flinch — I'd see only my zone, the pocket I could hit, the one I was hunting.
His hand came around. Yes, now—
"Batter, take your base."
""Boooooo—!!""
...Huh?
Four fingers?
The opposing pitcher went through his full windup as if he were about to deliver, then, before even settling into the set position, spread four fingers wide for the umpire to see. The automatic intentional walk.
Hold on. You were staring me down like you wanted a straight-up duel not two seconds ago, and this is an intentional walk?
If it had been an order from above, something he did with a grimace, I'd have understood. A man would at least feel a little shame about it.
But no — he stood there radiating pure confidence, as if the entire staredown had never happened at all.
"Wow. I genuinely did not know something could be this pathetic."
Right up until the last game, I never understood why the Coach hated Po'eun High so much. Standing on the mound as their opponent today, I'd begun to get a sense of it. But even that hadn't been the full picture. Only now was it crystal clear. It wasn't that these guys disrespected people, and moving strictly by the data wasn't the crime either.
The team itself is just insufferable.
Peeling off my protective gear, I pondered exactly how one went about delivering a righteous beatdown to clowns this infuriating. Honestly, at this point even Ye-eun would be more of a man than them. An intentional walk to the leadoff hitter with nobody out?
As I stewed and scanned the field, I spotted Cha Il-sung walking in from the on-deck circle. The guy looked quietly furious.
Not a play I was particularly keen to use — but maybe this was the only way.
"Hey. You see that?"
"See what?"
Being walked, I should've cleared the box and hustled to first, but the game was on hold while they settled the booing crowd, so there was time. I tossed a light word to Cha Il-sung as he stepped in.
"That catcher. He gives me an intentional walk and then he's laughing — at you."
"What?"
Cha Il-sung glared back and forth between me and the opposing catcher like he couldn't believe it. It was a complete lie, of course.
"I'm telling you, straight up. Part of it's that they're scared of me, but apparently you looked like an absolute pushover out there. What's it gonna be — you gonna let Kim Yi-seon get walked so Cha Il-sung can do the work?"
Simple-minded creature that he was, Cha Il-sung was now visibly trembling, fury banked deep in his frame.
For an ordinary hitter, emotional whiplash like this would wreck his approach. But this guy was built different.
"I mean, fair enough, I guess. You don't have a single homer this season. A guy with home runs is scarier."
"Quit spouting garbage. I'm hitting higher than you."
Astonishingly, that was fact. My average had never cleared .300 even last year, and with the two-way load this season it had dipped further. Meanwhile this guy had at least clawed his way onto the .300 doorstep.
"Still no home runs, though."
I kept chanting the spell of victory right into Cha Il-sung's ear. You're the pushover, big guy. Time to educate the men who disrespected you — with an extra-base swing.
Perfect. That was perfect. Leaving behind a scarlet-faced Cha Il-sung, I jogged down to first base.
Cha Il-sung stepped into the box, and anyone could read him: the bat gripped absurdly long, the stance spread comically wide. He was broadcasting I am putting this ball over the fence for the whole stadium to see.
Any normal pitcher would go to the breaking ball here. A data-obsessed outfit like Po'eun High would do it all the more.
Because Cha Il-sung — great tools, but a blockhead with no situational awareness — whiffs at breaking balls like it's his job.
But what about this instead?
"SAFE!"
"Booooooo!!!"
The jeers surged right back up. The opposing pitcher had thrown over to first to check on me.
High school crowds aren't usually crude enough to boo a guy for a mere pickoff attempt. But after that intentional walk, public opinion in the stands was in open revolt.
"SAFE!!"
"Hey! Just throw the dang ball already! When is the pitcher gonna PITCH?!"
Another throw over. From the stands it wasn't booing anymore — it was direct complaints. They still wouldn't curse at a kid, but the feeling underneath was about the same temperature.
The pitcher wavered slightly. He couldn't have wanted to keep throwing over in this atmosphere any more than anyone else would — but what choice did he have, when I was taking a lead the length of a small country?
That was a trick I'd picked up watching Lee Gyeong-tae work first base. I couldn't run well enough to steal much, but with my height and stride, I could take a huge lead and still get back safely.
A big lead, paired with a constant, teasing threat of the steal. The pitcher goes to his breaking ball? Even a plodder like me steals second standing up against a slow breaker.
No matter how iron-nerved, how brilliant, he was still a high schooler. Throwing an off-speed pitch between hundreds of jeering fans and a lead runner threatening to run was no easy thing.
And if it wasn't a breaking ball—
CRRAAACK!!!!!
""WHOOOOA!!!!""
Cha Il-sung did not miss it.
The game ended 2–0, thanks to Cha Il-sung's two-run homer.
Objectively, the MVP should've been me — a hundred-plus pitches over eight shutout innings — but it wasn't a complete game, and every time I play it's somehow always me winning MVP, so the Player of the Game went to Cha Il-sung this time. Which meant no interview for me; I'd come back to the locker room early to rest.
Still, a win is a win. My insides felt scrubbed clean.
While Ye-eun strapped ice packs onto both my arms in the locker room, I asked her something I didn't need to ask.
"Ye-eun."
"What."
"You know baseball pretty well by now. If it were you — last at-bat, would you have thrown the intentional walk like that pitcher did?"
"If I were the pitcher?"
"Yeah."
It was an out-of-nowhere question, but she considered it seriously. On the days I came back down after a start, she was sweet like this. Any other day she'd have told me to quit talking nonsense.
"Kim Yi-seon. I'm only saying this as if the other team were mine. Hear me out before you get the wrong idea."
"Okay."
"If you're going to hit a batter anyway, why on earth would you throw an intentional walk? Just drill him in the ribs."
She said it with the face of someone stating the obvious.
Right. Ye-eun, you're more of a man than every last one of those Po'eun guys combined.